


Into the Forest

by evil_isnt_born



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/M, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 07:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12836445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_isnt_born/pseuds/evil_isnt_born
Summary: After glimpsing potential hunters, Killian is determined to track them down before they can find him - or Emma - first, but it turns out what he's chasing in the forest is something different altogether.





	Into the Forest

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a fic swap with nightships and you should definitely check hers out too (http://archiveofourown.org/works/7515872/chapters/29262063).

"You have to promise me."

Killian hadn’t even waited to turn on the lights in the loft before he spoke. His words were louder in the dark, heavier, half-cast in moonlight as they hung in the air. Emma was still alive with adrenaline, sweat prickling her skin from the breakneck run back to the loft, and with her lupine senses still close to the surface, she imagined she could see the words between her and Killian, glinting in the muted blue light.

“No going out alone. Not anymore,” Killian continued. “Not until you’re ready.”

“You’re not my alpha.” There was so much more to her argument, but she didn’t know how to say it. She didn’t have ears to pin back or hackles to raise, sharp canines to bear or a rolling growl to release. And though Killian had argued before that her sluggishness in returning fully to her human body meant that she  _wasn’t_  ready, it felt like she had to be. They hadn’t been training long, but already the wolf was home.

“I know hunters, Emma. They don’t give you a chance to make mistakes.”

“Then I won’t make any.” Killian often told her that she had the heart of an Alpha, and she tried to will that into her voice - to make her tone as detached and uncompromising as his was - but it was hard when her skin still crawled with freedom, with the feeling of wind in her fur as she ran. Objectively, she knew the hunters they had seen in the woods were a threat, but even in this fragile, inadequate human body, they didn’t seem like it. They seemed inconsequential. Nothing compared to what she was, what Killian was.  

"You can’t guarantee that.” She bristled at the tone but it was gentler than before, and part of her knew he was right. Under the silver light of a full moon, the entire world alive around her, caution was a forgotten concept. 

“It’s not forever,” Killian continued, “But for now, we go out together. Always.”

Emma thought then that the dark room was probably intentional so she wouldn’t see on Killian’s face the lie she could hear in his voice. But instead she just nodded, and let him believe it.

\-------

The hunters were a problem. 

As he ran the path through the woods for the third time, all Killian could see was the shape of Emma in his bed, moonlight tracing the dips and curves of her body as she slept. But he could also still smell the unmistakable iron and ash of hunters, a scent that had made his heart pound even before he and Emma had caught a glimpse of them through the trees earlier this evening. The two together, that scent and the lingering image of Emma  _safe_ , nipped at his heels, pushing him faster as the overgrown bushes trailed skeletal fingers through his fur.  

The path was bare but he knew if he ran long enough and far enough, he’d find a footprint, a stray hair,  _something_  to tell him who he was up against, and maybe where to find them. For so long it had just been him and hunters hadn’t been a problem, but with more wolves and more temptation, he should have been expecting that to change. But he had experience, and if the hunters were who he thought they were, he had an axe to grind. 

All he had to do was find them first.

\-------

“How have we not caught even a scent of them?” Killian growled a week later, pacing the length of the kitchen while Emma pushed two steaks around a pan under the pretence of cooking. “We  _saw_  them and yet all week, nothing!”

“You don’t even know they were hunting us, Killian. Maybe it was a couple of guys out for some deer.”

“Deer hunters don’t smell like that.” He slammed a hand down on the counter on his way past. “It was hunters and they should  _be there_.”

“Be where?”

“ _Anywhere_.” His tone dissolved into a full blown growl as he whirled around for another lap, and Emma stifled a sigh. It had been like this since their first glimpse of the maybe-hunters, and every day that passed without another sign of them was another where the tension never released from Killian’s shoulders, where his face was lined with what he refused to call worry. “If we could just find them...” 

“What, Killian?” Emma arched an eyebrow and turned to face him fully. “What are we going to do if we find them? Kill them? Bring them back here? Give them a stern talking to?” 

The question threw him for a moment, his expression emptying out as he considered it, but it was barely a breath before the scowl was back in place along with his answer.

“Better to find them and know what they’re up to than stumble blind through the forest for the rest of our lives,” he said, a note of finality in his voice. “Whatever they’re doing in the woods, I have to know about it before it happens.”

Killian’s eyes caught Emma’s as he said the last bit, and there was something desperate there, hidden behind a week’s worth of frustration and a lifetime’s worth of rage at being hunted at all. It was an admission, too, that he didn’t actually have an answer for why he wanted to find the hunters so badly, but that it didn’t erase the raw  _need_. So Emma found herself promising that they would look again tomorrow, as they had every other day, and that they wouldn’t stop until they found something.

Despite Killian’s grateful look, she should have known that promise wouldn’t be enough.

\-------

It was almost insulting that Killian thought Emma wouldn’t notice him slip out of the loft - that she  _hadn’t_ been noticing as he did it night after night. Even if she didn’t hear him leave, she could always smell it on him when he returned, an unmistakable musk of earth and pine and cold moonlit air that wouldn’t leave him. If she thought she could track him undetected, she never would have let him go out alone, if not because of the hunters than just because she could never fall back to sleep until he returned, and she would rather spend her nights with him, mapping the forest with her paws, than alone in the loft, cursing herself for worrying.

When he left tonight, though, that desperation in his eyes stayed behind, taking up all the space in the empty room until there was barely air to breathe. There was something different about that look, a truth that Killian was unwilling to speak aloud, and she couldn’t shake it. Crowded by the memory of Killian’s expression in a room that was suddenly full of it, she wondered whether it was fair to go after him knowing he would just bring them both back to the loft and subject himself to the choking weight of  _wondering,_ one that was undeniably harder to bear than even this _._

 _I have to know_ , Killian had said. 

Emma slid out of bed, the wood of the floor cool under her bare feet. Following Killian wasn’t a question anymore. 

 _We go out together. Always._ So if he had to know, Emma did too.

\-------

Fog had begun to materialize, clinging to the bushes lining the path and creating a tunnel of silver and green in the moonlight dappling through the trees. Even with the sharper vision of her wolf, it was hard for Emma to see more than a few feet in front of her, but the fog also suspended scents in the air, painting an invisible trail in the night.

 _The world is different when you’re a wolf_ , Killian had told her when he first found her, young and scared with barely one full moon under her belt.  _It will come alive for you if you let it, but you’ve got to stop running_.

She had blown him off that first time, but he had made it easy to find him again, leaving sloppy trails in the woods that even a pup could have followed. When she did track him down, despite the ears pinned to her head and the growl rippling in her throat, he offered to teach her. To make the world come alive for her, even if he hadn’t said it in so many words.

And he had.

Even from miles behind him, Emma could pick Killian’s particular scent out of the thick air - the dampness of his black fur where the fog had clung to it, the whisper of pine gum from the dense grove to the north, and the heartiness of freshly turned earth where his claws had dug into the ground as he ran. The detail was still overwhelming, but the sense of connectedness was not. She didn’t have a pack beyond whatever she and Killian were to each other, but these days, she never felt lonely. Even when she was alone, she had the wind and the trees and the moon, the spongy bed of pine needles beneath her paws and the whisper of the other creatures in the woods, and it was everything. 

She should have been worried about the hunters, but suddenly she wasn’t. Somehow, despite her past and everything she had gone through to get to this place, she didn’t care about the people in the woods. Her senses were full of  _Killian,_  and all that mattered was finding him so the world could be alive for them both again. Hunters or not, whatever they encountered after that, they could face together.

\-------

Killian was tired.

He had been running all night, chased by the memory of iron and ash on the wind, the burn of silver bullets, and the acrid tang of wolfsbane. As with every other night, he hadn’t seen a glimpse or caught the barest scent of the hunters he was still positive he had seen in the woods, but it didn’t stop the ghosts of different hunters from haunting him. 

The fog didn’t help, drawing the trees in the forest too close, all the while suffocating him with heavy air that smelled like the past. 

He broke free from the forest when he couldn’t bear it anymore, stumbling to a stop on the rocky shore of a secluded beach and taking the first clear, shuddering breath in what felt like a week. His heart was still pounding and his paws stung from the abrupt stop on the uneven surface, but the waves welcomed him with a soft hush that drew out his breath in a gentle huff, a measure of tension along with it. 

He knew he couldn’t keep up this pace, but it was harder now with Emma around to ignore the potential danger that was inherent to what they were. He’d convince himself the hunters were gone from this town and then they’d go out running together, and her eyes would light up at the way the world lay itself bare for her, and he would remember what was at stake. Scents would dance on the breeze or a shooting star would flash overhead, easily within view from the top of an inaccessible ridge, and he would remember the same trip with another wolf. Then suddenly his paws on the packed earth would be too big for his body, his thoughts too giddy and optimistic, and he would be twenty years younger, chasing his brother down deer paths and along rocky mountain peaks without a care in the world other than the sights and sounds and scents his wolf picked up, the things that made him special. 

The scent of iron and ash swelled again, overpowering the salty air. Killian hadn’t known danger back then, not until it was too late. And that was what was at stake here, letting the same wonder and optimism slip through Emma’s fingers the way it had slipped through his. 

Almost as though she had been listening, Emma materialized from the fog at the edge of the beach, her scent cutting through the haze of the past and hitting him suddenly. He breathed in deep again, letting his wolf pick apart her scent and filling himself with it, and when he opened his eyes she was beside him, settling on her haunches with her eyes toward the sea. Still, she tilted her head toward him as if to ask whether he had found anything. A duck of his head gave a clear answer, and she nodded once but left it at that.

After a beat, Killian sat beside her, a fraction too close but just enough that he could feel her warmth cut through the evening air. Her mouth twitched a bit, just shy of a human gesture, and he got the sense that she was laughing at him even as she leaned in, resting the full weight of her body against his. In an unspoken agreement, neither of them shifted, not only because they were both without clothing but because the threat of hunters, imagined or not, was still too great for Killian to consider being out here unarmed with teeth and claws. Through the same miracle of understanding she always somehow had for him, Emma seemed to understand, and seemed content to sit in silence either way.

For several long moments they watched the waves crash against the shore, the salty spray lingering in the air and the roar of the water filling the world with white noise. It was peaceful enough to make Killian regret the nights he had left Emma behind in the loft, realizing only now that she had known the whole time.

He turned toward her, unsure of what he planned to do since he couldn’t say anything, but he found her already watching him, her gaze serious and, deep down, concerned.

 _There aren’t hunters out here_. 

So she had guessed, then, just as Killian had, that what he was really chasing out here were ghosts - ghosts and a version of himself that could protect the people he cared about, one that hadn’t existed back when it had mattered.

He shook his head, closing his eyes and letting out a long sigh that didn’t come close to releasing all the tension knotted around his spine. After a moment, Emma’s head came to rest against his shoulder, in a spot that felt like it was made for her. Like he had been waiting his whole life for this. 

That didn’t erase the years of worry either, the spectre of the hunters in the forest, or the scent of destruction that lingered in the air just at the edge of Killian’s senses.

But it helped.


End file.
